About Wine

Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a
compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several
POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD.
Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or
emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly,
eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and
allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your
desktop.

Wine began in 1993 under the initial coordination of Bob Amstadt as a
way to support running Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Very early on,
leadership over Wine's development passed to Alexandre Julliard, who has
managed the project ever since. Over the years, as the Windows API and
applications have evolved to take advantage of new hardware and
software, Wine has adapted to support new features, all while being
ported to other OSes, becoming more stable, and providing a better
user-experience.

An ambitious project by definition, work on Wine would steadily
continue for 15 years before the program finally reached v1.0, the first
stable release, in 2008. Several releases later, Wine is still under
active development today, and although there is more work to be done,
millions of people are estimated to use Wine to run
their Windows software on the OS of their choice.

Open Source and User Driven

Wine will always be free software. Approximately half of Wine's
source code is written by volunteers, with the remaining effort
sponsored by commercial interests, especially
CodeWeavers, which sells a supported version of
Wine.

Wine is heavily reliant on its user community too. Users volunteer
their time to share tips and test results on how well their programs
work in our Application Database, file bug reports to notify
developers of problems in our Bug-Tracker, and answer questions in our
forums.

Learn more:

(Several of the following pages are currently being reworked and
may not be up-to-date)